Spartan (2003): C+

It’s a bad sign that, three weeks after seeing Spartan, David Mamet’s latest thriller, I can scarcely recall what happens. The president’s daughter is kidnapped and apparently sold into the white slave trade (no, I’m not kidding), and stoic military spook Val Kilmer is assigned to rescue her. But when the government decides to cut its losses and proclaim her dead, Kilmer covertly heads to Eastern Europe to save the young girl. One is supposed to read Kilmer’s heroic decision as a sign that he’s matured into a man who can no longer ignore the humanity of those he’s assigned to save/kill, but since Mamet’s too-stripped-down script doesn’t provide us with a protagonist of any depth or emotion, it’s nearly impossible to care about Kilmer or his courageousness. The writer/director’s trademark dialogue is somewhat diffused by the military setting (which doesn’t allow for enough repartee), although a brief appearance by Ed O’Neil vividly proves that, in the right actor’s mouth, Mamet’s writing has an unmatched cool-as-ice zing. By and large, however, the bland Spartan is barely memorable.

Comments

[Stephan]

Hey Nick,

I just saw this movie and thought it sucked. I hated how Val Kilmer kept saying, "I'm just a worker bee." It seems to have gotten a lot of critical acclaim which really suprises me.

-Steph

[Nick]

HA! Well, my review says I could barely remember what happened in the film three weeks after seeing it, and now I can't remember almost anything about it - other than that it was pretty lame.